There is a zone close to parked cars which is often referred to by cyclists as the door zone. This is the metre and a half distance from parked cars into which doors can open. Imagine a cyclist cycling along at 15mph in this zone. Imagine now a motorist opens their door without looking as the cyclist approaches or is level with the car.
Nasty accidents can and do happen.
That is why I don't cycle close to parked cars, and why if this man had continued to open his door, which does happen, I should have been ok.
So if you cycle, keep out of the door zone!
Just started cycling to work again. I used to have a nice 3 mile back country route to work before I moved to Scotland. Now I sometimes do a part cycle, part train, which depending on the office can be a 16 mile cycle each way.
ReplyDeleteSo far in two months:
2 very near misses with vans, a lorry nearly flattened me, one angry commuter because I was riding in the centre of the line (@30mph down the hill in 30mph zone) and probably worst of all one school kid nearly knocked over - he just ran out across the road, didn't even look in my direction. Just managed to slow enough to only catch him a glancing blow with my shoulder.
Wondering about getting a helemt cam. Archos? or save up for a POV.1?
I suppose it depends on what your budget is, and what sort of quality you would be happy with. Had I had the money I would have boght a POV.1. However, at the moment I am running a dogcamsport helmet camera with my Archos recorder. I am happy with that, and I will be posting information, in the form of a review, soon....
ReplyDeleteHmm, Archos + HQ1 is about £300, but since starting from new, might go for the POV.1 as I also want to use it when out mountain biking - I've seen a lot of varying reports of archos quality/failures and am wondering how it would survive my usual inability to stay on the bike. ;-) I'll just have to wait till bonus time.
ReplyDeleteActually I'm having a problem with my Archos at the moment, the battery is failing and physically swelling! I'm going to replace it shortly. I also think the newer versions have solved this battery problem.
ReplyDeleteYou could go for the 405 which has a solid state version and so wouldn't have the hard disk issues. If you do buy something from Dogcamsports, you can get 10% if you have a look at the cyclechat forum (look at the discounts tab at the top for details).
Two incidents this morning ... on a roundabout, a car that was behind me, overtakes and then cuts left in front whilst hooting his horn at me. (I'm going straight on and just passing the junction he wants to get off at).
ReplyDeleteThen a little later on, at another roundabout, again I'm already on the roundabout, going straight on, when a lorry driver waiting at the junction to the left looks straight at me and then sets off more or less straight at me!
It's not as though I should be invisble ... daylight with a hi-viz yellow jacket with reflective stripes. I'm trying to find a different route, but there isn't really a good alternative that doesn't add another 5 miles to my 16 mile journey.
I've joined the ranks of the Borg this morning! Have a second hand POV.1 and recorded my journey today. What do you use for video editing / titling?
ReplyDelete:-)
ReplyDeleteThe POV.1 is a nice piece of kit!
I edit my videos using Windows Movie Maker (WMM).
WWM comes free with Windows XP. It might come free with Vista as well, I'm not sure....